FTA: "Mrs Rinehart, who has seen her fortunes rise after parlaying a multi-million dollar inheritance into a mining empire now worth more than $20 billion, blames anti-business and socialist policies for hurting the poor."

Can you share with the rest of us untermensch how someone manages to be a wildly successful self-made man? You know, one who didn't live a good chunk of his early years on the tax-payers' dime? Being disqualified from such a life personally, as I benefited from many institutions of the state, I was only asking in the hopes of passing on the wisdom to some uncorrupted youths in highlands of Peru.

Nope. I have no idea how to do that. Sorry. Peru is not my strong suit.

I grew up in the arts working for not-for-profit institutions. (Most funded by the taxpayers and I thank them)

It's kind of like a natural born Olympic level athlete telling the rest of us to exercise more. Sure, we'll never swim like Michael Phelps or run like Usain Bolt, but that doesn't mean that regular exercise won't make us more healthy.

No, it isn't. While the olympic athlete might have some genetic advantages (like Phelps' ape-like arms, great for swimming), they got to where they are by training, training and more training. This pig-faced b*tch was handed millions of dollars and used it to make more millions of dollars, like a certain republican presidential nominee.

In short she was put on third base, waddled her fat ass across home plate, and now has the temerity to open her flabby cakehole and b*tch about people who haven't even been allowed into the batter's box yet and probably never will be.

Babwa Wawa:seadoo2006: If you make more than $200k, ANYWHERE in the USA, you're rich in my eyes. You are rich enough to do whatever you want.

No, not really, at least in some areas of the country.

Seconded. I have a few friends who make between $200k and $300k, and they consider themselves solid middle class (and I agree with that). They own one house, pay a mortgage on it, have two cars, and usually have two or less kids. Really, $200k isn't that much. Figuring (modestly) a mortgage payment of $3500 a month, car payments, student loan payments, perhaps private school for the kids, and pretty much all your money will be spoken for. That's solid middle class right there.

Visionmn2:I have offered several people $1000.00 to get started after they go down, get a student loan, and get an associates degree. I have yet to have anyone take me up on my offer. They simply don't want to leave their comfort zone and blame others for the shortcomings in their life while yes, buying a pack of smokes and a lottery ticket.

Probably because they see the assloads of people who already have associates, bachelors, PhDs, and masters degrees in the unemployment office waiting in the same lines that they are. Why go into debt and lose two or three years of your life to end up right back where you started?

And before you break out the "STEM", realize that not everyone wants to be or can be an engineer, programmer, scientist or mathematician. If you're going to put years of your life into achieving something, make it what you want, not what someone else wants.

Wrong.Read the thread. It's much easier to be a successful race car driver if someone hands you the keys to a Ferrari. It's much easier to win the race if you're placed ten yards from the finish line. And it's much easier to become own a successful business when you have an assload of money to start it with.

However, no one here is "trashing" her because of her business, or that that she inherited an assload of cash, or that she looks like Jabba the Hutt's ex-wife. She's being trashed because of her sh*tty attitude toward people who don't have what she was given, and not earned.

Plenty of rich people around, but they don't get the flack this cow has earned for herself. Why? ATTITUDE.Be thankful for what you've been given, and be humble in receiving that gift.

Goalposts keep shifting, don't they? I wasn't the one holding her up as on the equal of Alan Sugar.

Goalpost shifting? You're the one who has claimed many times in this thread that the woman in TFA didn't do anything, just having millions let her sit on her arse and turn it into billions. So clearly, if that is the case, this Indian woman can just sit on her arse and turn her $100million into a billion, right?

Or are you now admitting that it isn't as easy as that? That she "only" has $100m and that's it, she'll never get to Alan Sugar's level? She's well over a decade younger than him. Plenty of time to catch him up....

And this woman was telling Australians they should work harder. What has that got to do with slum dwellers from Mumbai? You're the one shifting the goalposts by claiming they can't work themselves rich. She never said they could.

It's kind of like a natural born Olympic level athlete telling the rest of us to exercise more. Sure, we'll never swim like Michael Phelps or run like Usain Bolt, but that doesn't mean that regular exercise won't make us more healthy.

No, it isn't. While the olympic athlete might have some genetic advantages (like Phelps' ape-like arms, great for swimming), they got to where they are by training, training and more training. This pig-faced b*tch was handed millions of dollars and used it to make more millions of dollars, like a certain republican presidential nominee.

In short she was put on third base, waddled her fat ass across home plate, and now has the temerity to open her flabby cakehole and b*tch about people who haven't even been allowed into the batter's box yet and probably never will be.

fark her.

So an athlete trains and works for their success, but anyone with a hundred million just has to sit there, do nothing, and become a billionaire?

I'm not a billionaire, but I don't make excuses like "the man is keeping me down" or "the system won't let me". I've had chances and blown them, and I'm pretty lazy. But I'm honest enough to admit that, not make excuses to let me feel better and blame my lack of success on anyone else.

Lottery winners have won $100million, and what's happened to them? Many have blown the lot in a few years. I thought you said anyone with that sort of windfall didn't need to do anything? They could just sit there and become a billionaire?

Who has ever said that? They employed people. Those people got paid a wage. They didn't risk their money. Who has ever claimed a "self made" billionaire achieved their success without employing anyone? Isn't being a job creator (and the taxes that generates) a good thing? Isn't that part of the benefit of starting ...

I bolded the pertinent parts for you. You are not "self-made" if you are relying on other people for your success. Once again, show me someone who owns a sole proprietorship, has no employees, has never taken a loan or endowment, and is a billionaire. Then we can figure out if that person ever used publicly funded utilities, courts, and technologies. If not, then there very well may be a good argument for that person being "self-made". Though, i am confident that if we dig hard enough, we can find a way that this mythical individual had to rely on other people's efforts on their behalf.

Flint Ironstag:roc6783: vpb: ***snip***Successful people make their opportunities. Most people would find themselves sharing an elevator with Donald Trump/Steven Spielberg/Bill Gates and think "Whoa! I'm in an elevator with Donald Trump/Steven Spielberg/Bill Gates!"***snip***And yes, most people won't be sharing an elevator with Trump/Spielberg or Gates. But if you're a shelf filler at Walmart you might share an elevator with the GSM or an area manager. How about saying "I'm Joe Sixpack on grocery. I've got a suggestion for cutting cost/increasing sales"? Most people wouldn't even do that.

I underlined your delusional assertion and bolded the part where you contradicted completely yourself. People DON"T MAKE OPPORTUNITIES anymore than they control the weather. Here is an example, there is a drought in one county and every farmer there has a terrible harvest, and in the next county there is a perfect amount of rain and a massive harvest. Would you say that the farmers in the county where there was a drought were lazy or stupid or unsuccessful? No, there was a drought, completely out of their control.

Now say that the drought county still has a drought, and the perfect rain county still has perfect rain, but the weather forecast for the growing season predicted that the drought county would have perfect rain and the perfect rain county was predicted to have a drought.

To combat the predicted drought, all but one of the farmers in the predicted drought county plant soybeans since they can tolerate less water, but don't bring in nearly the same profit as corn. That one farmer decides to plant corn because no matter what the prediction is, he is a corn farmer.

In the predicted perfect county, everyone plants corn to take advantage of the predicted good conditions.

Now we fast forward to the harvest and see that everyone who planted corn in the predicted good county got burned because of the drought, everyone who planted soybeans in the predicted drought county barely broke even because of the margin on soybeans, and the one guy who planted corn in predicted drought county is now a multimillionaire because he had a banner harvest AND no one else had any corn.

Too many people point to the one guy who got stupid wealthy off the wrong decision, simply because it turned ok due to forces beyond his control. See that last bit is the kicker everyone wants to ignore. You can have a society changing product, but if the market doesn't want it (which you have no control over) you are sunk.

Successful people try to do everything they possibly can to increase their likelihood of having an opportunity, but they don't make them. Or they can be born into success, win the lottery, get hit by a mail truck, etc. The fact of the matter is that successful people where successful because of far reaching factors over which they had no control, but that doesn't fit the "work hard and be a billionaire just like me because I work hard" narrative.

TL;DR - You are a product of your genetic makeup, which you have no control over, and your environment, of which you control a very small portion. If you are successful, congrats, but stop telling everyone else who isn't that the only reason they aren't is because they don't work hard enough. It isn't, and it isn't the only reason you are successful either. Game theory, how does it work?

Babwa Wawa:seadoo2006: If you make more than $200k, ANYWHERE in the USA, you're rich in my eyes. You are rich enough to do whatever you want.

No, not really, at least in some areas of the country.

If you have a family, it changes the calculus drastically. I grew up lower-middle class. I went to college even though my parents had saved a grand total of $1500 for my education. Financial aid, pell grants, and means-tested tuition all benefited me. I can expect to pay full tuition for my kids, so I put an astronomical amount of money into their college funds, and I get exactly a 5% tax break on that dough. That's just one example. Another would be child care - the average annual cost of infant and preschool child care in the state of Connecticut is $13,000 per child. Again, almost all after taxes. Between college planning and child care, a young high income family is looking at $2000 per child per month, almost all of it after tax. With an effective combined federal/state/FICA tax rate of 30%, a $200k income earner can expect $11,666/month, and three kids will take up well about half of that, leaving let's say $5000-$6000/month for a family of five to fund the parents' retirement, pay the mortgage, utilities, food bills, transportation costs, etc.

CErtainly nobody making $200k can cry poverty. You can't even say that they're scraping by. But that family is not "rich". They can't "do whatever they want". There is no cabin on Lake Winnepesaukee, there is no boat, there is no sports car. There's a Hyundai SUV and a 6 year old subaru, and one away vacation a year.

Now, one of the guys who works for me makes $225k and lives on Manhattan in Chelsea. Single, no kids. He lives an enjoyable life.

Having a kid is a DECISION YOU MAKE. Christ, again, I said that anyone could live like a king on $200k. If you're stupid with your money (like pouring money down the drain having a kid), that's your own damn fault.

And child care? WTF, I'm 25 and I can count on my hands the number of people I grew up with that had 'child care' ... uh, no, you take care of your own damn kid or you ask granny or grandpa to watch them for a few hours. Again, these are your own PERSONAL decisions. If you have a kid, and can't sustain yourself on one income, well, you're god damn stupid.

Somehow, 98% of the country manages with less than a $200k household income a year ... Oh, you poor starving babies. Sorry, you're just farking greedy and stupid with your money. Somehow, my dad, on a single income, raised 4 kids through private school and college making less than $200k a year. My mom stayed at home.

98% of this country do it just fine. The complaints from the 2% saying they struggle is just financial stupidity. End of story.

rewind2846:The Stealth Hippopotamus: I can see why people around her would trash her for it.

Wrong.Read the thread. It's much easier to be a successful race car driver if someone hands you the keys to a Ferrari. It's much easier to win the race if you're placed ten yards from the finish line. And it's much easier to become own a successful business when you have an assload of money to start it with.

However, no one here is "trashing" her because of her business, or that that she inherited an assload of cash, or that she looks like Jabba the Hutt's ex-wife. She's being trashed because of her sh*tty attitude toward people who don't have what she was given, and not earned.

Plenty of rich people around, but they don't get the flack this cow has earned for herself. Why? ATTITUDE.Be thankful for what you've been given, and be humble in receiving that gift.

Good post. I'm sure this lady put a lot of time and effort into her business, but so do the majority of business owners. She got extremely lucky in life not once but twice. Work is not the difference why she's worth billions and others fail.

seadoo2006:f you're stupid with your money (like pouring money down the drain having a kid), that's your own damn fault.

Yes, we should all live in a country with no children. Do you have any idea the kind of economic and societal death spiral a society goes into when old people significantly outnumber the viable workers?

seadoo2006:WTF, I'm 25 and I can count on my hands the number of people I grew up with that had 'child care' ...

How do you propose to make $200k, or even $100k a year without having someone care for your children while you're at work?

seadoo2006:Somehow, my dad, on a single income, raised 4 kids through private school and college making less than $200k a year. My mom stayed at home.

As did my father. He didn't have to plan for retirement - he had a pension that almost nobody outside of government can count on now. My sisters and I were able to take advantage of means-tested programs for higher education, which will not and should not be available to me. I will pay for my children's higher education in full, with contributions from them working summer jobs, etc. Retirement and higher education requires planning for higher income folks, and it requires that I put aside a good portion of my take home pay.

I love your selective reading. I said quite clearly that nobody in that income range can cry poverty, nor can they say that they're scraping by. However, people in that income range are not "rich", as you wrote, nor can they do "whatever they want", as you also wrote.

As I requested earlier- Can you tell us how someone manages to will themselves into such a fortune absent, say, being schooled on the tax-payers' dime? Presumably, since they started with "nothing", they weren't enrolled in private schools, they weren't enrolled in public schools, and they didn't have parents who had the luxury of being able to teach them themselves.

As I requested earlier- Can you tell us how someone manages to will themselves into such a fortune absent, say, being schooled on the tax-payers' dime? Presumably, since they started with "nothing", they weren't enrolled in private schools, they weren't enrolled in public schools, and they didn't have parents who had the luxury of being able to teach them themselves.

As I requested earlier- Can you tell us how someone manages to will themselves into such a fortune absent, say, being schooled on the tax-payers' dime? Presumably, since they started with "nothing", they weren't enrolled in private schools, they weren't enrolled in public schools, and they didn't have parents who had the luxury of being able to teach them themselves.

Is this too obtuse of a line of questioning?

I see. You were being needlessly pedantic.

Carry on then.

One of the things I've noticed about "self-made billionaires" is that although they might not have started with a significant bundle of cash, they tend to have been raised in the upper class. I believe it's the way they perceive risk and reward. Those with lower-class and middle-class upbringings will tend not to take the kinds of risks required to build a billion dollar industry. The children of the middle class and lower middle class tend to take very few risks. For example, the idea of leaving Harvard to start a software business that has virtually no market is not something a middle class person would normally decide to do. They are pressured and programmed for stability, partly because of upbringing and partly because of the lack of a financial safety net. Someone with upper or upper-middle class parents will not necessarily find themselves completely destitute after the failure of a high-risk, high-reward effort.

For the rectal pluck of billionaires who came from upper middle class upbringings are Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Carlos Slim. I think Larry Ellison is one of those guys who doesn't fit the mold.

And that's why your opinion is so very narrow. Like I said before, people do get married and have kids and base their lives on that income structure. Sometimes you just don't know your wife is going to leave you several years later.

Life changes. You're 25 so you haven't seen that yet and you seem to have led a very sheltered life to this point so I'm not surprised you can't see much further than life has allowed.

As I requested earlier- Can you tell us how someone manages to will themselves into such a fortune absent, say, being schooled on the tax-payers' dime? Presumably, since they started with "nothing", they weren't enrolled in private schools, they weren't enrolled in public schools, and they didn't have parents who had the luxury of being able to teach them themselves.

Is this too obtuse of a line of questioning?

And the goalposts move yet again! TFA is about a woman talking to an Australian audience, but you said she's talking rubbish because not enough people from the slums of Mumbai have become millionaires. What has that got to do with Australia?Then you claimed she didn't actually do anything, she inherited millions and just sat on her arse and that turned into a billion, but the woman from Mumbai who made $100million you say doesn't count because she's not as rich as Alan Sugar. Surely by your logic all she has to do is sit on her arse and wait, right? No effort required?

Then you create your own definition of "self made millionaire", a totally different definition that everyone else uses. By your definition they can't have been schooled, by the state or privately, and can't have employed anyone. I am sitting here on the edge of my seat waiting for your next requirement. They can't speak English or any known language? They can only communicate by grunting and pointing? They can't be self made if they use our language, right? Or can they only use a PC if they have written their very own programming language and OS? Go on, amaze us with your next definition of self made.

(Not to mention if any self made millionaire did achieve that without employing anyone you'd be the first to say "What a selfish bastard! He didn't create any jobs! I thought they were supposed to be job creators!?")

Babwa Wawa:T.M.S.: Jon Snow: T.M.S.: Are you trying to make some sort of point?

You apparently know multiple billionaires who "started with nothing".

As I requested earlier- Can you tell us how someone manages to will themselves into such a fortune absent, say, being schooled on the tax-payers' dime? Presumably, since they started with "nothing", they weren't enrolled in private schools, they weren't enrolled in public schools, and they didn't have parents who had the luxury of being able to teach them themselves.

Is this too obtuse of a line of questioning?

I see. You were being needlessly pedantic.

Carry on then.

One of the things I've noticed about "self-made billionaires" is that although they might not have started with a significant bundle of cash, they tend to have been raised in the upper class. I believe it's the way they perceive risk and reward. Those with lower-class and middle-class upbringings will tend not to take the kinds of risks required to build a billion dollar industry. The children of the middle class and lower middle class tend to take very few risks. For example, the idea of leaving Harvard to start a software business that has virtually no market is not something a middle class person would normally decide to do. They are pressured and programmed for stability, partly because of upbringing and partly because of the lack of a financial safety net. Someone with upper or upper-middle class parents will not necessarily find themselves completely destitute after the failure of a high-risk, high-reward effort.

For the rectal pluck of billionaires who came from upper middle class upbringings are Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Carlos Slim. I think Larry Ellison is one of those guys who doesn't fit the mold.

I suspect that that may be true for many cases. But the opposite can also be true. Without poverty to drive them on many people would just settle for the comfortable middle class life. And grinding poverty can drive some to great success.

To go back to Alan Sugar again he was, and is, very much working class. State school, state provided and subsidised housing. He started out selling stuff in a street market stall.

Michelle Mone is a working class Glasgow woman who left school at 15 and became a model. She started her bra company with redundancy money.

Tony Pidgley is the founder and owner of Berkeley Group.This article says: "Pidgley was adopted from Barnardo's aged four by travellers and spend his formative years living in a disused railway carriage. He left school aged 15, struggling to read and write, and became a gardener.Pidgley was able to save up enough money to buy a lorry and then, showing a sharp business acumen, bloody-mindedness, and common sense, quickly established it as a significant haulage company.By 1968, just five years after leaving school, he sold the business and became a millionaire, gaining a job at the purchaser, Crest Nicholson, in their building division.His experiences allowed him to found Berkeley and turn it into one of the most-respected housebuilders in the industry."

Barnardos is a national orphanage BTW.

If an orphan who struggled to read and write when he left school at 15 can become one of the biggest property developers in the UK then anyone can do it. Not saying they will be able to do it, just that it is possible.

Despite some of the weapons-grade derp in this thread, like you can't become a millionaire unless all the current millionaires agree to allow you, or that there is a fixed amount of dollars in the economy so if one person gets richer everyone else must get poorer, it is possible.

I guess some people simply refuse to accept that because then they will have no one to blame for their own lack of success. Far easier to just not bother and tell yourself that "The Man" wouldn't let you succeed anyway, so it's not your fault you're poor.

And to the single parent guy, your case sounds bad. But JK Rowling was a single mother living on welfare who wrote a book while looking after her young child. There are people today making big money selling stuff on ebay from home. many people are making money making videos for Youtube.

Flint Ironstag:Despite some of the weapons-grade derp in this thread, like you can't become a millionaire unless all the current millionaires agree to allow you, or that there is a fixed amount of dollars in the economy so if one person gets richer everyone else must get poorer, it is possible.

Totally agreed. Nearly anyone with some amount of intellect and a sense of hard work can become a millionaire. I was thinking more of the folks who will, once they amass a modicum of true fortune, will risk it to approach true wealth (tens to hundreds of millions).

And a corollary to the upper-class upbringings affecting sense of risk so they can approach billionaire status: I think those who grew up in poverty are more likely than middle class to get there. Growing up in poverty has a tendency to make you view risk differently - poverty is familiar, and therefore you are unafraid of it.

A class exception to this are those who attain true wealth through arts and entertainment. JK Rowling took few risks in becoming a billionaire, unlike Branson or any of the other folks I mentioned. Surely it takes hard work to get there, but it's not usually a systematic or particularly risky approach that attains the wealth.

Flint Ironstag:And to the single parent guy, your case sounds bad. But JK Rowling was a single mother living on welfare who wrote a book while looking after her young child. There are people today making big money selling stuff on ebay from home. many people are making money making videos for Youtube.

Yes, but all those people did things that other people were willing to pay money to have them do. That's completely unfair, that they get money just because they work hard at making entertaining material or doing things that other people value, while I work just as hard playing World of Warcraft and Minecraft and don't get paid a penny.

The problem isn't that the poor want to be poor. They don't, obviously. It's that they don't generally have the financ ...

It's nothing to do with the long term poor, she is talking about the middle class. The people who do the actual work that makes people like her rich.

She might actually do some work, but that's not where here money comes from, she simply inherited a company which gives her the right to take whatever the employees of the company produce and give them as little as she can get away with.

I have never understood why someone would be able to inherit an organization anyway, like it was a piece of furniture or something. It's almost like the feudal system where nobles inherit a manor and get to take a big share of what the serfs produce, simply because of birth.

Youre looking at it from the wrong angle. Why shouldn't the person who built the organization be able to do whatever he/she wants with it?

If I am smart/lucky/hard working enough to build a business worth $100m/$2m/150k or whatever, why shouldn't I be able to give it to my lazy stupid son? Sure, he didn't do anything to deserve it but I did and want it to go to him.

Visionmn2:dittybopper: The problem isn't that the poor want to be poor. They don't, obviously. It's that they don't generally have the financial skills to help them claw their way out of poverty.

Not just financial skills - also the motivation. I have offered several people $1000.00 to get started after they go down, get a student loan, and get an associates degree. I have yet to have anyone take me up on my offer. They simply don't want to leave their comfort zone and blame others for the shortcomings in their life while yes, buying a pack of smokes and a lottery ticket.

It is OK to have poor people, wealthy, and everything in between and why this country feels otherwise is ridiculous. We need people to work at McDonalds, do our dry cleaning etc. We are all wired to do something in life and we should not reward those who are wired to mooch and take from others - especially those who do get offered jobs and turn them down because they would not make as much as they do from Welfare and hand outs.

signaljammer:Bill Gates grew up in one of two communities, as I did in the other, that made computers available to students at the time. His father was a patent attorney who was able to keep Microsoft private up to the 286 gen on his own dime. His mother was on the board of the Red Cross along with the president of IBM, so he got the contract for the PC OS. Sweat of his brow.

Just like Zuckerburg attended Harvard. He is definitely not a self made man.

Icetech3:I agree with this guy 100%.. I grew up in detroit, had nothing.. i work 70 hours a week.. i don't believe in drinking and partying and i now have a good bank account and a nice house and a pretty good life.. just takes hard work.

plcow:vpb: That's comical. No one gets rich from hard work. You can inherit it, you can steal it, you can exploit flaws in the financial system, you can get lucky in the stock market (assuming you have a lot of money to invest in the first place), win the lottery etc. Working won't do it for you, working makes other people rich.

Besides, it is interesting to me that the wealthy people who think this way are almost always people who inherited their money. People like Warren Buffett seem to have more of a grasp of reality, since they actually had to do something to make their money.

Bullsh*t, it takes work. Some people have better starting advantages than others, but it always takes work. There are almost as many geniuses on welfare than millionaires. The only thing that is assured is that if you play on Fark, or Skyrim, or get high all day is that you will NEVER become wealthy.

I work a 7-5 during all day, business network 2-3 nights a week, and probably spend 2-4 hrs a night trying to find ways to save money or boost my income. I have been doing this for several years (sometimes spending 6+ hrs at night for weeks at a time). I am just now in my 30's, I will become wealthy, and if I don't I will keep trying. I want the freedom of not being tied to a 9-5 or relying on other people for my safety and the safety of my family, and I will fight and work and do whatever it takes to get it. People think I am smart, and I can assure you I am not, I have just WORKed my ass off compared to other people, and other people look at me and think there must be some kind of short cut to get where I am at. Most people can't even comprehend doing what I do, much less do it. And this is because limitations set in their own minds, mostly by making excuses like you did.

Another problem that I commonly see, is that many people have WAY too high of expectations for what the return for their work should be. You work 10 hours and expect $100, you put your money into the stock market and ...

While I agree with much of what you said, I think you are stuck in the grind with the rest of us, and just haven't realized it yet.

T.M.S.:All but one billionaire I know started with nothing. All but one of them made their money in television.

I advise working in television.

Yep. Entertainment is one of the highest yeilding products of America. That said, if we don't create a living standard for all workers, who will mow our yards or clean/fix our septic tanks? If we don't assure the man who takes that job a livible wage or guaranteed advancement, we might as well create a slave class. That is what is happening now.

"If you have a hundred dollars and want to make it a hundred and ten, that's work. If you have a hundred million dollars and want to make it a hundred and ten million, that's inevitable" (source unknown)